amusements, photography

Ace Signs

2 Comments

I’ve been in central London this morning taking photographs for one of my projects. While there we took the opportunity to visit the Wellington Arch at Hyde Park Corner. The arch has recently re-opened to the public. There’s a couple of small exhibition spaces and you can go out onto the balcony and get some super views of London. Amongst the small exhibition about Stonehenge there was this sign:

Druids Only

I can’t decide whether the juxtaposition of the press and druids is highly incongruous or immensely prescient.

Visiting the Wellington Arch is well worth the small admission charge if only to get the unusual views of London. It was reviewed recently by IanVisits, to whom my thanks as otherwise I would never have known it was open!

During the morning I also spotted this sign in Golden Square:

There's no Escape ...

Surely only in England!?

photography, pleasures

More Orchid Porn

Yes, here are some more orchid pictures. I cannot get over how fantastic these flowers are. First a new one I bought this morning …

Cream Orchid
Cream Orchid

I bought this rather nice greeny-cream with pink blush (almost a Hellebore colour; it’s much creamier than the photo suggests) orchid in our local Waitrose. It had been sitting there looking forlorn, very dry & tired and with a couple of wilted flowers for the last 3 weeks. I’ve looked at it every week and rejected it. Today when I looked at it the second time, I thought I’d ask if they’d sell it to me at half price. To my surprise and delight they agreed.

Having brought it home, taken off the wilted flowers and given it a good water it already looks 100% happier. OK, so it has only these three flowers and a couple of buds to come. But it is rather pretty and who knows I may be able to nurse it back into flowering properly next year.

I also bought this one at Waitrose this morning …

Pink Orchid

It is a very pretty blushed pink — much prettier than my photo shows. It is profuse with flowers and with at least another 8 buds to come, so well worth paying full price for it.

And finally another shot of one of the orchids I’ve had for some weeks and which is still flowering well.

Magenta-Veined Orchid

In fact all my orchids are still flowering well, the first has now been in flower for something like 10 weeks!

They look magnificent, especially when you put them all together in a nice sunny window.

As I say I can’t get over how fantastic these flowers are. OK so mine are all Phalaenopsis hybrids, perhaps the easiest of the orchids — but then that’s why they’re easily available and so cheap.

I really don’t mind, they just look stunning!

amusements

Who Knew …

I spotted this in a Daily Telegraph online news item yesterday …

“the survey of 1000 women found that two in five female British women admitted to have “al fresco sex“.

So how many male British women admitted to it?

Sadly(?) they’ve since updated the page and corrected the grammar.

photography, pleasures, ramblings

A Curiosity of London

OK, so here’s one of the more curious of London’s accoutrements …

Buxton Memorial Fountain

It is the Buxton Memorial Fountain and you can find it in Victoria Tower Gardens, just south of the Houses of Parliament wedged between Millbank and the river.

Apparently it was originally constructed in Parliament Square but moved in the 1940s and placed in its present position in 1957. It was commissioned by Charles Buxton MP to commemorate the emancipation of slaves in 1834, dedicated to his father Thomas Fowell Buxton, and designed by Gothic architect Samuel Sanders Teulon (1812–1873) in 1865.

It surely has to go down as one of London’s more outré and colourful adornments. Not only does it have that “spire” of coloured encaustic(?) tiles, but it is carved with various animals including some very dragon-like iguanas/lizards.

Not the best of photos as it was taken on a horridly grey and, as can be seen by the puddles, rather wet Sunday morning.

current affairs

Whither Now?

I just can’t help feeling we’re living in interesting times. And this last weekend could go down as a tipping point.

France and Germany have stitched up a deal on the Euro financial crisis created by countries living beyond their means. The deal involved banks lending countries even more money to pay for the debts they already couldn’t afford.

Britain and the US have bailed out banks who racked up debts by lending money they didn’t have to people to live beyond their means. Having engendered a debt crisis those same banks are now being berated for not lending people even more money.

But this weekend the French people have said a resounding “Non” and elected an anti-deal, Socialist, President and given the incumbent a bloody nose. The new President basically wants to tear up the deals.

The Greek people, in a parliamentary election, have effectively thrown out the coalition which agreed to their country’s bailout. There will either be a new anti-deal coalition or new elections.

The Irish are tiptoeing towards at least trying to tear up the deals.

And the Italians are expressing discontent with the stitched up deal in their local elections.

Meanwhile …

Britain is again in recession — I personally doubt we were ever out of it — and if you look at the data this is a much longer and deeper (double dip) recession than those of the mid-70s, early-80s or early-90s. (The mid-70s recession felt pretty bad, so heaven knows where this one will end up.)

Shareholders at UK insurance giant Aviva have rejected the boss’s bonuses leading to the resignation of the CEO. Other shareholder revolts look to be on the cards.

The value of the Euro has fallen against the Pound; you can now get at least €1.20 to the Pound.

All the markets are sharply down on the day largely due to the uncertainty in Greece and the rest of Europe. One thing the markets hate is uncertainty.

And of course Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, is behaving like a petulant child and throwing her toys out of her pram to try to blame and bully everyone, because her chickens are coming home to roost and her knicker elastic has perished.

It’s a harsh reality, but all of this could probably have been avoided if (a) the rigid structure of the Euro had been stillborn, (b) the regulations on budget deficits in the European Treaties (and they were there regardless of the Euro regulations) had been adhered to and (c) a few banks had been allowed to fail because of their bad debts.

What of this could not have been foreseen?

Who said we don’t live in interesting times?!

quotes

Quotes : On People

The problem with me is, I guess, the way I express myself, you have to be with me 50 years before you can get a sense of what I`m talking about.
[Al Pacino]

There’s no point in constantly worrying about everything. What will happen will happen anyways. So breathe, look on the bright side, have some laughs, fall in love, accept what you can’t change, and carry on. To actually live is courageous. Most people exist, that is all.
[unknown]

Some people are old at 18 and some are young at 90 … time is a concept that humans created.
[Yoko Ono]

Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.
[John Wooden, basketball coach]

Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it.
[Pablo Casals]

More people have poor taste than good taste. They come to their opinions quickly and without any thought, like a small child. That’s why there’s fast food. And moronic reality television shows. And people who follow Paris Hilton. More people will enjoy crack than Proust’s novels. Ergo, just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s inherently good or worthwhile. Too many people just love bad shit because they don’t know any better.
[HyperSexual Girl at Love & Lust]

history, links, science

In Case You Missed …

Another in our occasional series of links to interesting items you may have missed. First several scientific items.

Why is there a universe? Where did it appear from? Sean Carroll investigates.

Singing Mice? Yes they really do sing! And no-one knew until recently.

Next, an interesting summary of the history of the last 200 years in surgery. Just be thankful you live now and not then!

And after all that heavy stuff here are some great examples of the humour of taxonomists. Never let it be sad that scientists are terminally dull.

And finally for the scientific, here’s a report of a rather pretty and extremely rare strawberry blonde leopard (above) spotted in the wild.

Back to the heavy stuff for a minute, here’s an important examination of the interaction of gender and world politics. Seems those countries which are worst on gender equality are also the least stable.

Finally something completely different. Scholars are suggesting that a previously unexamined Elizabethan map of America provides clue to a lost colony.

food+drink

Rustic Fruit Tart

Something else I cooked this weekend was what I’ve called Rustic Fruit Tart. This was mainly because I’d had some blueberries in the fridge for some days and thought they should be cooked. It’s rustic because it used mostly what I already had to hand and it isn’t designed to look fancy, just taste good. I used rhubarb and blueberries; you could do it with any other combination of fruits you like.

For two 8″ (20cm) tarts this is what I did …

1 packet of commercial pasty (or enough homemade pastry for two 8″/20cm flan tins)
800g fresh Rhubarb
350g fresh Blueberries
2 tbsp Sugar
half wine glass of Fruit Juice

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200C (gas mark 6); use the fan if you have one.
2. Wash and chop the rhubarb and put in a pan with the fruit juce and sugar. You want the end product to be fairly sticky so don’t add too much fruit juice.
3. Cook, with a lid on and stirring occasionally, until well cooked and the rhubarb pieces have broken down.
4. Meanwhile roll out the pastry and line the two flan tins. Prick the base of the pasty cases with a fork so they don’t bubble too much; use baking beads if you have them. Keep any pastry offcuts.
5. Blind bake the pasty cases for 15-20 minutes.
6. Remove from the oven and fill each case with the cooked rhubarb.
7. Scatter plenty of blueberries on top of the rhubarb.
8. Decorate — as badly as you like, after all this us “rustic” tart — the top of the flans using the pastry offcuts and glaze (I used milk and sugar).
9. Now bake for another 15-20 minutes until the pastry decoration is golden and the filling bubbling.
10. Remove from the oven and eat hot or allow to cool in the tins before turning out.
11. Dust with icing sugar (if such is your desire) and devour with clotted cream.

Notes
1. You can use either puff or shortcrust pastry. I used puff which didn’t work well as it puffed too much when blind baked. I’m also lazy and use commercial pastry — well I’m allowed some shortcuts!
2. Individual tartlets would work too, using exactly the same method.
3. I put a piece of baking parchment in the base of each flan tin to ensure the case didn’t stick too badly.